Proust Revisited: Memories of a Childhood in Combray

Hello, everyone! It is a beautiful Saturday morning and I hope you all are taking advantage of such a nice summer day, enjoying the sun and getting some reading done :). Yesterday, I woke up wanting to do a little exercise, but due to a cold I didn't want to do anything too extraneous; plus, I also really wanted to read. So, I decided to do a reading-walk, which is one of my favorite things. Reading while walking is surprisingly fun, especially when you go with your boyfriend who is reading, too! We walked to a couple of nice reading spots in the college campus near by, where nature trails and shaded leafy areas provided seating. It was fun, relaxing and a perfect setting to read Proust in!

Speaking of which, I have been loving it! I haven't even gotten around to finishing (let alone picking it up again) H.P. Lovecraft because I can't seem to put down Swann's Way. It has been such an interesting re-read; I end up remembering most of it from the first time but am not any less impressed with the beauty of the language. One of my favorite writing styles is long sentences (when executed well, of course), and this abounds in Swann's Way.  Proust writes detailed and poetic descriptions of anything from cathedrals to someone's body movement, and he seems to have a really good understanding of the workings of a human mind.

The novel is divided into three parts: Combray, Swann in Love, and Places-Names: The Name. In the first, a narrator whose name is not given talks about his childhood at Combray, remembering his youthful fears and imaginations, all very realistic and written as if Proust himself was the one with the a magic lampshade that projected images of tales on his wall. The narrator says that he remembers little else from this time in his life than his room, where most of his fears and anxieties took hold of him, and the ritual that preceded his bedtime. Then, one day, the narrator tries some "petites madeleines" dipped in tea, something he used to do as a little kid, and the rest of the Combray memories flood back to him. This is what drives the rest of the section as the narrator paints a beautiful and detailed portrait of his daily life: the nuances of his grandmother and great-aunts, his family's rituals, such as mass and daily walks, how he would spend time reading, etc.

"…the sun, still wintry, had come to warm itself before the fire, already lit between the two bricks and coating the whole room with an odor of soot, having the same effect as one of those great rustic open hearths, or one of those mantels in the country house, beneath which one sits hoping that outdoors there will be an onset of rain, snow, even some diluvian catastrophe so as to add to the comfort of reclusion the poetry of hibernation; I would take a few steps from the prayer stool to the armchairs of stamped velvet always covered with a crocheted antimacassar; and as the fire baked like a dough the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was all curdled and which had already been kneaded and made to "rise" by the damp and sunny coolness of the morning, it flaked them, gilded them, puckered them, puffed them, transforming them into an invisible, palpable country pastry, an immense "turnover" in which, having barely tasted the crisper, more delicate, more highly regarded but also drier aromas of the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the floral wallpaper, I would always come back with an unavowed covetousness to ensure myself in the central, sticky, stale, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered coverlet." (51)

This is just one of the many stunning sentences in the novel, in this case about the smells of his great-aunt's house that used to fascinate him. I can read this over and over; the images of the baked goods, the word choices and repetition towards the end….falked, gilded, puckered, and puffed…it tickles the tongue!


Another part I really enjoyed reading is when the narrator discusses the levels of consciousness in his mind as he reads in his garden. Lasting about five pages long, this passage is very organized, beautifully written, and quite accurate. The first thing he is aware of: "my belief in the philosophical richness and the beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate them for myself, whatever that book might be." (86) Isn't this true? I have always been aware that I trust in a book too much; questioning what I read hasn't always been my strong point, though I think deeply on what I read. It also has to do with why I like most books I pick up, because I go into them already loving them. The next thing the reader is aware of: "the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I was taking part, for those afternoons contained more dramatic events than does, often, an entire lifetime. These were the events taking place in the book I was reading; it is true that the people affected by them were not real…" (86) Events that happen in real life to other people are always a degree removed from us, and we would never feel as much as if it were happening to us, the narrator says. Furthermore, the things that do happen to us do so over time, and the impact is lessened. When reading, however, the distance and timespan is removed, and events cause in us deep emotions that others would not know.

"Thus our heart changes, in life, and it is the worst pain; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality, it changes, as certain natural phenomena occur, slowly enough so that, if we are able to observe successively each of its different states, in return we are spared the actual sensation of change." (87)

The next level of awareness is focused on "the landscape in which the action unfolded and which exerted on my thoughts a much greater influence than the other, the one I had before my eyes when I lifted them from the book." (87) Here, again, observations made from a true reader. When I remember a book I've read in the past, I do so by seeing the scenes and landscapes I envisioned in my mind when reading it. Reading a book, you are where the characters are, just as my head is currently filled with the dark streets of Combray, the church's steeple marking the sky. The last thing the narrator talks about is perhaps one of the sweetest for me when it comes to reading: "Lastly...pleasures of another kind, the pleasure of being comfortably seated, of smelling the good scent of the air, of not being disturbed by a visit; and, when an hour rang in the bell tower of Saint-Hilaire, of seeing fall piece by piece what was already consumed of the afternoon..." (89).

"Sometimes…something that had taken place had not taken place for me; the interest of the reading, as magical as a deep sleep, had deceived my hallucinated ears and erased the golden bell from the azure surface of the silence. Lovely Sunday afternoons under the chestnut tree in the garden at Combray, carefully emptied by me of the ordinary incidents of my own existence, which I had replaced by a life of foreign adventures and foreign aspirations in the heart of a country washed by running waters, you still evoke that life for me when I think you of you and you contain it in fact from having gradually encircled and enclosed it- while I went on with my reading in the falling head of the day- in the crystalline succession slowly changing and spanned by leafy branches, of your silent, sonorous, redolent, and limpid hours." (89)

I will end with that, and I will be back later! I hope you all enjoy this post; I put a lot of quotes and excerpts because I cannot do the book justice otherwise. I am about 150 pages in and am looking forward to finishing the section Combray, though I remember Swann in Love is where I stopped last time. Pictures coming soon!